I’ve been playing around with a low-powered Windows 10 device (Atom X5-Z8300 with 4GB RAM), and noticed an interesting/annoying behaviour: ads in online TV shows really taxes the CPU. And these are shows played from major networks’ (Australia) own websites!

Whenever the actual show is playing, the CPU hovers around 50-55%. But as soon it switches to an ad, the CPU shoots up to around 95% and fluctuates wildly. Suffice to say, the ads stutters on screen and the whole browser goes unresponsive for a few moments.

It befuddles me to think why non of the major networks demand their ad suppliers to optimise this better. There are times when I give up watching the show because of the ads. And there are even times when the flash player would get stuck waiting for the ad server to respond.

You invest in all this infrastructure, optimisation and copyright deals to make the TV shows available on your website, only to be foiled by the ads that were suppose to generate the income that makes this whole thing worthwhile. That would be ironic. And idiotic.